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NHL Picks

NHL Betting: Best ATS Teams of 2013-14

So you say you’re a moneyline hockey bettor, eh? Well, there’s some good value on the spreads as well. To illustrate the point, we took a look back at the best puckline teams of 2013-14 to show you which did the best against those NHL odds.

Columbus Blue
JacketsPuckline Record: 53-29The Blue Jackets were an excellent puck line team in 2014
as they finished 14 games over .500 in that regard – the best in the NHL. The
math is quite simple: they scored an average of 2.76 goals per game and allowed
an average of 2.61. That means their 0.15 differential served them quite well
when getting the extra puck. This is a team that – while improving – was still
an underdog more times than not. That will probably change next year after a
quality showing in the postseason.

Calgary FlamesPuckline Record: 52-30The Flames were also fantastic on the puck line but their
story was quite different. Early on in the season, they were one of the worst
teams in the league. In their first 58 games, their differential was -0.74. In
the last 24 games, that climbed to 0.29, which was a huge improvement.

The Flames proved to be greatly undervalued by the end of
the season. They were left for dead with just 16 wins in their first 50 games
but they actually finished the year 19-13-0. They were an underdog in many of
those situations and paid off handsomely. If you look at their numbers getting
+1.5 – which is likely the situation that they were in down the stretch of the
season more often than not – they covered that spread in 19 of their final 22
games. That’s why they finished second in this category.

Winnipeg JetsPuckline Record: 48-34The Jets were a great puckline play no matter how you
looked at it. That’s because whether you laid the -1.5 expecting them to win or
took them +1.5 expect them to lose by a small enough margin, you did pretty
well. In the Jets 37 wins this season, they won by an average of 1.57 goals. But
in the Jets 45 losses, they fell short by an average margin of -1.56. That
means they were pretty much covering most of the time looking both ways.

Philadelphia
FlyersPuckline Record: 46-36The Flyers proved to be a pretty good puck line play this
season mostly because of their margin of victory. They won 42 games on the
moneyline but at a closer look, their average margin of victory was 2.00 goals
per game. That means they were cashing on the -1.5 plenty because their
opponents weren’t very close in those games.

The issue for the Flyers is that they also didn’t cover
many +1.5 spreads either. They only scored 1.80 goals per game in their defeats
and lost by an average of 1.95 goals per game. Had they played better in those
games, they could have definitely elevated themselves in the standings here.